Open raise
also called RFI
An open raise is the first voluntary raise of a hand, made when everyone before you has folded and nobody has yet put money in beyond the blinds.
It is the single most frequent decision in poker, and the one where a fixed plan is worth the most. Which hands you open, from which seat, decides the shape of everything that follows, and it is the part of strategy that can be learned once and used every hand.
The correct range widens as the button gets closer, because fewer players are left to act. A common size is between 2 and 3 big blinds online and larger live, and the size matters far less than the range does.
an example
your cards
Everyone folds to you in the cutoff and you raise to 2.5 big blinds with ace queen. If the blinds both fold you win 1.5 big blinds without a flop, and when they do not you have position and the stronger range.
This example is made up. The real one is in your own hand history: find open raise in your own hands and see how often it came up and what it cost you.
related terms
Position
Position is where you sit relative to the button, and it decides whether you act before or after your opponent in every ...
Range
A range is the whole set of hands a player could hold in a given situation, rather than a guess at the one hand they act ...
Steal
A steal is a raise from one of the last seats made mainly to win the blinds uncontested rather than because the hand is ...
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Knowing the word is not the same as seeing it.
Forty hands against a bot, no account, and your own hand history at the end.